UN Interviews

Haiti is facing a “catastrophic and cataclysmic” human rights situation according to the UN’s designated expert on rights issues in the Caribbean island nation, William O’Neill.

Attacks by gangs, executions, kidnappings for ransom, violence against women – including  rape – as well as corruption, inmates dying in jail and a paralyzed judicial system, are just some of the rights challenges the country is facing.

And now Haitians are becoming frustrated at the slow pace of international efforts, particularly the Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission, to help the country to combat these problems, according to Mr. O’Neill.

The human rights expert has just finished a 12-day mission to Haiti.

Daniel Dickinson spoke to him from the capital Port-au-Prince and began by asking how ordinary Haitians are coping. 

Amid intensifying strikes either side of the Israel-Lebanon border linked to the war in Gaza, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that some 1,500 people are still in hospital from this week’s extraordinary attack on mobile communication devices, reportedly targeting the Hezbollah armed group. 

Dr. Abdinasir Abubakar, the UN health agency’s Representative in Lebanon, said that almost 3,000 injured people were rushed to hospitals after the pager and walkie-talkie explosions. Medical teams struggled to handle the massive influx of patients in the country where the “tension is increasing every day”, said the WHO official.

He spoke to UN News’s Nancy Sarkis.

Myanmar’s civil war has escalated to include systematic atrocities, including attacks targeting civilians, torture and sexual violence, according to a new report on Tuesday from the UN human rights office.

Since the military seized power on 1 February 2021, at least 5,350 civilians have been killed, and more than 3.3 million displaced. Over half the population is living below the poverty line mainly due to violence perpetrated by the national armed forces.

The situation is particularly alarming in Rakhine state, the site of a brutal crackdown on the Muslim Rohingya community by the military in 2017, leading to the exodus of nearly 750,000 community members into neighboring Bangladesh.

UN News’s Mehboob Khan spoke to UN refugee agency (UNHCR) Global Spokesperson Babar Baloch and asked him to sum up the situation in the country. 

Some 4.5 million children are not attending school in Yemen, where Government forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, and Houthi rebels have been at war for a decade.

Peter Hawkins, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Representative in Yemen, said the “catastrophic situation” is a “time bomb” as the country could possibly have a generation of citizens who are unable to read and write. 

He told UN News’s Khaled Mohamed that UNICEF has been working to rehabilitate damaged schools and to support teachers and children in returning to the classroom, especially girls, though he acknowledged it is not enough. 

But first, Mr. Hawkins refuted recent “baseless” Houthi allegations that UN agencies and partners have been colluding to destroy Yemen’s education system. 

A series of crises is making it difficult for Haiti’s most vulnerable farming households to work their land, recover from natural weather events and build their livelihoods according to a senior representative of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Extreme weather, including hurricanes, as well as the effects of climate change and now rampant insecurity have dramatically impacted successive growing seasons leaving around five million Haitians hungry.

The Caribbean island nation of 11 million people is largely rural and agriculture employs about half of the workforce.

FAO’s director of emergencies, Rein Paulsen, has visited Haiti and spoke from the capital Port-au-Prince to UN News’ Daniel Dickinson at about a farming community he visited in Grande Anse in the southwest of the country.

Amid the brutal war in Gaza and fears of famine, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is providing Palestinian livestock holders with veterinary kits to keep their animals healthy and disease-free.

This is just one example of the UN agency’s work to ensure food security and economic stability in conflict zones, including the West Bank, Ukraine and Sudan.

To find out more about these efforts, UN News’s Nancy Sarkis in Geneva spoke to FAO Deputy Director Beth Bechdol. 

Over half a million people have been severely impacted by unprecedented flooding and windstorms in Yemen.

The UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) has been working in the hardest-hit areas providing emergency shelter, cash assistance, and clean water.

But the agency is facing significant challenges, including limited resources and ongoing conflict, which complicates relief efforts, according to Matt Huber, IOM’s Acting Chief of Mission in Yemen

Talking to UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki, Mr. Huber said that IOM has just launched a $13.3 million appeal to scale up its response to meet the growing needs in the country. 

More work needs to be done to ensure the success of the multinational security support mission which has deployed to Haiti to help the national police address chronic levels of violence and instability. That’s according to Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the UN and the newly elected president of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

The mission, which is not a UN peacekeeping operation, began deploying in June and has experienced some notable gains including shifting the area of operation of some of the gang activity in the capital Port-au-Prince away from two key hospitals and the main port.

But, talking to UN News’s Cristina Silveiro following a visit to the Caribbean island nation, Mr. Rae said it was impossible to say the country “had turned a corner”.

This is Daniel Johnson for UN News.

Superbugs – or bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics – continue to be a major worry for the medical community and health authorities, because if they emerge and spread globally, life-saving drugs will no longer work.

As part of the global effort to prevent such antimicrobial resistance, the UN World Health Organization on Tuesday launched the first-ever guidance for manufacturers of antibiotics on what to do with their wastewater.

The guidance has been developed in partnership with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and its launch is timed ahead of the UN General Assembly high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance on 26 September.

With more, here’s Kate Medlicott, Team lead of sanitation and wastewater in the UN health agency’s Department of Climate, Environment and Health, who I caught up with in Geneva. 

The fighting hasn’t stopped in Gaza but that hasn’t prevented tens of thousands of parents from making sure that their children are given the first of two polio vaccines.

The UN-led initiative inoculated 15,000 youngsters in one school-turned-shelter in central Deir Al-Balah on Monday, according to Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA.

Talking to Daniel Johnson from UN News on Monday, she described the challenge of rolling out the campaign where, to be successful, 90 per cent of Gaza’s children under 10 will need to be vaccinated – right now, and again in four weeks.